I had
no distinct sense of danger. It is true that the thought of being
drowned passed across my mind, but it cost no other sensation or
reflection in me than this--that I felt quite contented and willing it
were so, if it were my heavenly Father's choice." Sailing from Nice to
Genoa, a storm keeps her eleven days at sea.

"As the irritated waves dashed round us," she writes, "I could not help
experiencing a certain degree of satisfaction in my mind. I pleased
myself with thinking that those mutinous billows, under the command of
Him who does all things rightly, might probably furnish me with a
watery grave. Perhaps I carried the point too far, in the pleasure
which I took in thus seeing myself beaten and bandied by the swelling
waters. Those who were with me took notice of my intrepidity."[171]

[171] From Thomas C. Upham's Life and Religious Opinions and
Experiences of Madame de la Mothe Guyon, New York, 1877, ii. 48, i.
141, 413, abridged.

The contempt of danger which religious enthusiasm produces may be even
more buoyant still. I take an example from that charming recent
autobiography, "With Christ at Sea," by Frank Bullen. A couple of days
after he went through the conversion on shipboard of which he there
gives an account--

"It was blowing stiffly," he writes, "and we were carrying a press of
canvas to get north out of the bad weather. Shortly after four bells
we hauled down the flying-jib, and I sprang out astride the boom to
furl it. I was sitting astride the boom when suddenly it gave way with
me. The sail slipped through my fingers, and I fell backwards, hanging
head downwards over the seething tumult of shining foam under the
ship's bows, suspended by one foot. But I felt only high exultation in
my certainty of eternal life. Although death was divided from me by a
hair's breadth, and I was acutely conscious of the fact, it gave me no
sensation but joy. I suppose I could have hung there no longer than
five seconds, but in that time I lived a whole age of delight. But my
body asserted itself, and with a desperate gymnastic effort I regained
the boom. How I furled the sail I don't know, but I sang at the utmost
pitch of my voice praises to God that went pealing out over the dark
waste of waters."[172]

[172] Op. cit., London, 1901, p. 230.

The annals of martyrdom are of course the signal field of triumph for
religious imperturbability. Let me cite as an example the statement of